Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Last Saturday’s arrest of Paul Weston - chairman of the party Liberty GB and candidate in the 22 May European Elections in the South East - for quoting an anti-Islam passage by Churchill in Winchester, and the subsequent charge against him of Racially Aggravated Crime with a possible jail sentence of 2 years, have provoked many reactions.

Michael Coren interviewed Weston yesterday on the major Canadian national news channel SUN TV, ironically touching on his “Islamophobia” or, as Paul etymologically and aptly defined it, “an irrational fear of submission”. Coren was so incensed at this violation of the very freedom of speech that Churchill himself - and before him Alfred the Great from his seat in the same town of Winchester - established and defended, that he declared himself willing to defy arrest and quoted the full Churchill passage again on air.

Why should it fall to me to defend him? Where are the lion-hearted liberals who are so quick to denounce political arrests in distant dictatorships? I realise that "political arrest" is a strong phrase, but it's hard to think of any other way to describe a candidate for public office being taken into police custody because of objections to the content of his pitch.

Hannan, despite being a political opponent of Liberty GB and seemingly ignoring a few truths about the reality of Islam, has complained to the Hampshire and Wight Commissioner about the case. He adds: “This is not the first time that the police have invented a right not to be offended, and chosen to elevate it over the basic freedoms we used to take for granted.”

Dozens upon dozens of American sources have reported and commented on the story. Dr. Bill Warner, Director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam, has taken inspiration from Weston’s example on how to be more effective in opposing totalitarian authority.

The Washington Times, perhaps not as famous as the Lefty Washington Post – which, like all Leftist media, has kept silent – but a high-circulation conservative paper, ran this:

A: Winchester, which is in the county of Hampshire, and Hampshire is part of the South-East constituency for the European Union elections which I’m standing in. So I thought: “As it’s part of my constituency, I will go down and try and explain to these people, who do not live nearby to a Muslim community, something about Islam to them.”

Q: You were actually speaking to a crowd about standing as a candidate in an election in a riding in which you were one of the candidates. How many people would you say were listening to you?

A: Well, in the beginning — you know, let’s face it: none of this lasted for very long, I’m afraid. We had — I started off by saying to them, that “People of Winchester, I want to talk to you specifically about Islam, and I want to read something to you.” And then I started reading it. We were immediately interrupted by this woman, who then immediately got on her phone, and we rightly assumed she had phoned the police. And within about three minutes the police had arrived and taken my megaphone away from me and taken my transcript of Churchill’s words, and said that I could no longer do that, because my words were causing offence and distress to people who were listening.

Q: Did your audience or the police know at the time you were quoting Churchill? Or did they know afterward? At what point did they know it was Churchill you were quoting? Did you start out by saying that this is Winston Churchill, or were you saving that for the end of the quote?

A: Well, no; I was never actually going to mention it at all. If I hadn’t been arrested, I would have mentioned it was Winston Churchill. Having been arrested, I thought, “There’s absolutely no point informing the police about this, because they will then perhaps be slightly less forward in taking action.” And I thought that, “If it really has come to the point that you can be arrested for saying these words, then don’t tell them who originally said it, and let them prosecute you — arrest you, prosecute you — and just to show the rest of the world how utterly sunk this poor old country of Britain is today.”

Q: Interesting; I agree with that. Among the people that were there when you started, did you have any supporters? That were listening?

A: We did. We had — you know, there were — we got passers-by initially, and a small crowd formed, but this was literally all over within three minutes. And by the time it ended, we had people shouting from the crowd, “What are you arresting him for? There’s nothing wrong with what he’s saying!” Which was probably about 80% of the people, with that view. And the 20%, of course, were shouting things like, “You’re a bunch of Nazis,” and, you know, the usual stuff that either the hard Left, or the totally uninformed about Islam, come out with.

Q: What is the charge that you believe is going to be levelled at you?

A: Well, in the beginning, they said to me that, because my words were causing concern and distress, I should immediately cease. When I said that I wasn’t going to do that, they said, “If you don’t cease, we will arrest you under something called a ‘breach of the Section 27 Dispersal Notice’.” And I said, “Well, that’s fine, but I am standing for an election in this constituency. I have the right to free speech. I will continue speaking.” I picked up the megaphone again; I think I got about two words out, and that was it. I was manhandled down the steps, and then searched and chucked into the back of their police van. When we got to the police station, I wasn’t fingerprinted, my DNA wasn’t taken, because a Section 27 is not necessarily a criminal offence. So they said, “We’re not going to fingerprint and DNA you.” They put me into a cell, and they kept me there, I think, for about five hours, and then a policeman came in and said, “We’re dropping the original thing” — which was this Section 27 breach — “We are re-arresting you in the police station now under the ‘incitement of racial hatred’”, and specifically they are getting me with “racially aggravated crime under Section 4 of the Public Order Act.” Which I’ve had a look at, and it’s rather nasty: it says that you can go to gaol for two years under that one.

Q: Major media in the UK: has there been any interest in this? Any requests for interviews by BBC, or even The Daily Mail, or anything?

A: No, there has been absolutely nothing. I got a phone call earlier from The Southampton Echo, which also covers the Winchester area, and I — Well, I didn’t get a phone call, I got a message saying, can I phone the journalist. And I was expecting an antagonistic bloke, and that’s exactly what I got. He was not horrified about the idea you can be arrested for quoting Churchill in Britain today. He wanted to know why I did it, what I thought I would achieve, was I aware that by doing that I would be causing offence and distress, and all the buzzwords they come out with. So that’s the only British media outlet that has come anywhere near me. And it was immediately antagonistic. Apart from that, there has been nothing.

Q: What would you say that the attitude of the police was that were dealing with you? Both in the police station, and the initial arrest? Did you get any sense of their view of this?

A: Well, the two policemen that initially arrested me were very young. They didn’t really have the faintest idea what was going on. It was only when I got to the police station that that was then dropped, and a senior policeman then brought in the charges of racially aggravated crime. But, despite that, they were — I can understand they’re following orders. The actual policemen themselves were very polite, very civilised. One of them even talked to me for half an hour after the interview, because I had a taped interview in the interview room, and I was supposed to go back to the cells, and he said, “Look, we’re going to arrange bail for you. You don’t need to go back to the cell. We can sit in here and have a cup of coffee and a sandwich and have a chat off the record.” And, off the record, he said to me that, “We are essentially at war in this country, but of course I’m not in my official capacity allowed to say anything about that.”

Q: What would you like to see happen? What do you expect to happen next? There’s going to be a trial, then? Like, you’ve been formally charged. Or, at least you’re going to be formally charged. Do you know anything about when there will be a trial?

A: Well, the — I’ve been bailed for three weeks. I’m due to go back to the police station on May the 24th. And I am assuming that, in the interim period — what the investigating officer said to me at the time was, he will forward everything, including the — obviously, because they don’t have video of me doing it. They are just responding to a report from the crowd; they heard a few words that I said. But what they have said, they have taken a copy of the Churchill transcript, and they are sending that on to the Crown Prosecution Service with the recommendation that I be prosecuted under this racially aggravated Section 4. So somewhere between now and May the 24th, if the Crown Prosecution Service says, “Yes, we’re going to go ahead and prosecute him,” then I’m assuming that when I go back to the police station on May the 24th I will be arrested and held.

Q: So, for the benefit of people that don’t live in the UK, what level of court, and meaning of court — the court system is a little different than it is either in Canada or the States. This would be in front of a magistrate or a judge? This is a criminal proceeding, right?

A: It’s a criminal proceeding, but criminal proceedings can be dealt with in magistrates’ courts. But I would imagine, because clearly, if they are intending to prosecute, then we are obviously going to mount a proper defence, so it would probably go to a Crown court hearing with a judge, which is similar to — I’m sure you heard about the whole Tim Burton “taqiyya” trial recently, and of course Tim got off on that one, and the Crown Prosecution Service must have been aware that he was probably going to get off, but they are — you know, the Crown Prosecution Service was taken over by the cultural Marxist Left a long time ago, twenty years ago now. They will prosecute anything they possibly can, even if they know they’re going to lose it, simply because they think that by prosecuting, they will deter anybody else from doing it, even if they win in court; they still don’t want to have to go through that pretty unpleasant situation, especially when the power they have on their side is the fact that if you are found guilty, the sentence is two years.

Q: Is there anything that people both inside or outside the UK could do to help you? Are you fundraising, or do you just want to raise awareness of this? Or what is it that you would like to see people do?

A: Well, I think at the moment it’s just to raise awareness, because I know that — I always knew before this happened that the probability of my being arrested was very high, and the probability of the English, British media taking any interest in it was very low. And I thought that, this is where we need — and thank God they exist — a country, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, where you can actually still say these things and get away with it. And my initial thought was, if we can get this into — I mean, for example, I think I’ll be with Michael Coren next week, and Erick Stakelbeck is trying to organise something for Fox News and Glenn Beck. So if we can make it big enough in America, that the media over here are simply forced into having to report it, then that would basically satisfy every single reason for why I did this in the first place.

Sunday, 27 April 2014

The leader of the Liberty GB party Paul Weston, who was arrested yesterday for breaching a Section 27 Dispersal Notice, is now possibly facing imprisonment for 2 years.

Mr Weston, a candidate in the 22 May European Elections in the South East, was arrested on 26 April in front of Winchester Guildhall for quoting in public a passage critical of Islam written by Winston Churchill, using a megaphone.

He spent several hours in a cell at Winchester Police Station, after which the original charge of breaching a Section 27 Dispersal Notice was dropped and Mr Weston was "re-arrested" for a Racially Aggravated Crime, under Section 4 of the Public Order Act, which carries a potential prison sentence of 2 years.

He was then fingerprinted and obliged to submit to DNA sampling, following which he was bailed with a return date to Winchester Police on May 24th.

Had the woman who complained to the police made an official statement, Mr Weston would not have been released last night, but fortunately for him she did not.

The case is now being presented to the Crown Prosecution Service. If the CPS decides to prosecute, then Mr Weston will be arrested, awaiting trial, when he presents himself to the police on May 24th.

Yesterday Paul Weston, chairman of the party Liberty GB and candidate in the 22 May European Elections in the South East, has been arrested in Winchester.

At around 2pm Mr Weston was standing on the steps of Winchester Guildhall, addressing the passers-by in the street with a megaphone.

He quoted the following excerpt about Islam from the book The River War by Winston Churchill:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith."

Reportedly a woman came out of the Guildhall and asked Mr Weston if he had the authorisation to make this speech. When he answered that he didn’t, she told him “It’s disgusting!” and then called the police.

Six or seven officers arrived. They talked with the people standing nearby, asking questions about what had happened. The police had a long discussion with Mr Weston, lasting about 40 minutes.

At about 3pm he was arrested. They searched him, put him in a police van and took him away.

Friday, 25 April 2014

First of all, we have to distinguish between individuals and societies. The short answer is individuals can, societies cannot.

I'll leave societies to another article. In this I want to concentrate on individuals.

Although it's possible for many non-believers (but not for all, that's why societies cannot function without a religious foundation) to have an ethical system that guides their conduct, it's undeniable that this desirable state of affairs is more difficult to maintain for them than for those who truly believe in the Christian God.

Let's give an example. Arthur is an atheist who thinks that people should be nice to each other and behave decently and honestly simply because it creates a better environment for everybody and, purely using his reason, he arrived at the conclusion that all benefit from social interactions conducted according to the principle of looking at things from the others' perspectives, putting yourselves in their shoes (well expressed in the Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would have them do to you").

We all know that not everyone behaves this way. One day Arthur hires a building firm, Smith, to do extensive external repair works to his house, which cost him a lot of money but could not be avoided or postponed. He treats the company well, doesn't complain about the job done unless necessary, pays all his invoices immediately, doesn't protest too much about the price asked. He is assertive when it comes to protecting his rights and is not a pushover, but other than that he doesn't make things difficult for the firm.

Arthur then finds out that Smith has carried out similar works for one of his own neighbours, Bob, a very grumpy and unlikeable chap. Bob has acted in exactly the opposite manner. He and his wife made life hell for the builders during their work, finding faults with everything and anything they did. In addition, they didn't pay some of the invoices and, two months after the job was finished, are still refusing to pay in full, giving several pretexts.

But what shocks Arthur most is Smith's response. The company people, although privately despising Bob and callig him names, treat him with respect and go out of their way to accommodate him. They even offer him delayed payment options and discounts they never even mentioned to Arthur.

Now, Arthur is only human after all. Rational, striving to be a moral person, but with emotions of anger, envy, self-doubt and resentment always boiling under the surface and close to pouring out at the first provocation.

This particular provocation is not small either. Now we have Arthur battling within himself, against himself.

The first thing he thinks is that behaving nicely doesn't pay, whereas being a bully does. So, the rational basis for his choice of decent conduct seems shaky now.

What in this case has been the outcome of a moral choice of action, if you have to calculate it in terms of self-interest, although a rational, enlightened self-interest, enlarged to comprehend the interest of the whole society to which you belong?

There are times when pure rationality, if you are atheist, doesn't lead you to an ethical choice. Benefit scroungers who live off the others make a perfectly rational choice. So do criminals who know they won't be caught.

And in many other cases, like the one of my example of Arthur, even ordinary, decent people who sincerely desire that an ethical path is the same as a path of justice, that doing the right thing results in a reward and not a punishment, have to give up in desperation, abandoning the hope that we can square this circle in this life.

But if they could believe that justice always triumphs - if not in this, then in the next world - because there is a giver of justice who also gave life to everything that exists, this belief could act as a great help at times when being ethical may not seem so rational after all.

Our life is made up of so many banal examples as that of Arthur's predicament. It's perhaps not too much to bear for our shoulders, or maybe it is. Either way, it's overwhelmingly obvious that a belief in a just God like the Christian God greatly helps people maintain an ethical outlook and behaviour in even the most difficult circumstances.

If you don't believe, you may think that whatever is good and expedient for you is OK, as long as nobody can see you. If you believe, you know that there is someone who always sees you.

But that is not to be taken in the sense of a CCTV camera. Because, if that someone is merciful, understands and forgives, you don't feel under an external control: you just feel less alone in your constant struggles.

Thursday, 24 April 2014

In a blog I used to have I've found an article about The Da Vinci Code. It was written in May 2006, but the tacticts employed by those who wish to attack Christianity with devious means are still the same, making the piece still relevant.

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If I want to make a lot of money by writing an absurd story with no evidence to support it, disproven by historians, art historians and archaelogists, a story intended to attack Christianity which is an easy target because it is already under siege, a story that will treat Jesus Christ in the same way that Hello! and other gossip magazines treat celebrities, what shall I do?

Wait a minute, someone else has already done it.

They have written The Da Vinci Code.

First of all, Da Vinci is not a surname. Leonardo was illegitimate, and "da Vinci" simply means "from Vinci". It's the same as calling St Francis of Assisi just "of Assisi". A bad start for a writer.

Secondly, the book relies on the widespread ignorance of Christian matters among the general public. To list all the gross errors, inaccuracies, disproven hypotheses, reliance on false documents, distortions in history of art, “elaborate hoaxes”, falsified history, and so on contained in the book would take much more than an article.

Historians, art historians, archaelogists have conclusively demonstrated that the whole story of the book is a lie (you could call it a work of fiction, if it weren't for the ambiguity of its status), not a fact.

Some of this is revealed in the book The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction? by Hank Hanegraaff and Paul L. Maier.

And, if this were a book (and film) offensive to Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism, it would be considered a hate crime. If, God forbid, it were offensive to Islam, on top of being labelled a hate crime it would also make book author, movie director and producers’ fear for their lives (in fact, a film about Islam would be even too dangerous to make).

But to offend Christianity is “art”, as in the case of Chris Ofili's painting of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung and surrounded by cut-outs from pornographic magazines.

The omnipresence of the much over-used words "Islamophobic" and "anti-Semitic" obviously shows that certain groups are protected by political correctness, but one group is not.

Do you have doubts whether to believe the story of The Da Vinci Code?

Try this.

With a little intelligence, logic and thought, you may be able to solve your doubts.

Why do you think that The Da Vinci Code was intended by its author as a work of fiction?

For one very simple reason: because it contains accusations and claims against a real organization, the Catholic Opus Dei.

If these charges had been expressed in a declared non-fiction work (an expose, for example), the organization concerned could have sued the book’s author for libel and defamation.

Now, if the author had felt sure of his own accusations against the Opus Dei, he wouldn’t have had any trouble with this possibility of being sued, actually he would have welcomed a court case where his claims would be vindicated.

He obviously knew that he did not have a case against them, as it is expounded in the book.

So, he decided for the fiction label of his book.

At the same time, in true gutter press hack style, he did not want the truth to stand in the way of a good story.

So what did he do?

He wanted to have his cake and eat it.

He wrote a book, allegedly fiction, but by using historical figures, real organizations and true paintings as his book’s subjects, he could maintain an ambiguity that, while protecting him from possible legal actions, gave nonetheless the impression that he was talking about reality and historical events, making a gullible public believe what he wanted them to believe.

He did not have the guts to challenge his targets directly, face to face, and have his claims refuted during a lawsuit.

This is the work of a coward, who is afraid of a legal action for libel and defamation, but is not afraid of spreading lies.

In fact, the parallel with tabloid gossip journalism is not coincidental. The way that book treats Jesus Christ is not very far from the way the gutter press treats celebrities.

Some people have pointed out that works like Independence Day are not real accounts of an alien invasion because the screenwriters used real organizations like the Air Force and the President of the US, or The Red Badge of Courage was not about a real soldier because the character was in the Union Army.

But not every historical novel or period drama film, or any other work of fiction with a historical or real background, is the same as The Da Vinci Code.

In it, historical figures and institutions are the main characters in the (allegedly fictional) story, and not just part of the backdrop that “the screenwriters used”. They are the story, so anything that is said about them in the plot is either historically accurate or - if not - should be considered as fiction by the readers or movie-goers. But is it? Therein lies the ambiguity.

History is what The Da Vinci Code is about, unlike those other examples, where history and reality are the pretext or background.

The last time I checked, aliens trying to invade the earth were not part of the history curriculum.

And no, The Red Badge of Courage wasn't about a real soldier, and that's exactly what makes a comparison between the two books irrelevant: he was a fictional character; but Jesus Christ is not.

This explains why many people believe that The Da Vinci Code is true, whereas not many - fortunately - believe that aliens have tried to invade the earth. You wouldn’t see an online comment about alien stories, Independence Day and The Red Badge of Courage such as this:

The damn book is fiction but a great story. If there is any good to come out of all of this I hope it is that Christians will try and find the truth about the historical, factual Jesus. For far too long we 'little folk' have allowed ourselves to believe that which has been preached to us without question. Faith may be nice but even Christ Himself encouraged His contemporaries to search for the Living God. The majority of Christian Doctrine today has been sanitized, distilled and manufactured to fit the mold of a handful of power mad despots who used the story of Jesus to advance their own interests.

The examples of fiction books or films set against a historically true background - or in which the imaginary characters are surrounded by real figures and events - are irrelevant, because there was no intention in those works' authors to mislead the public into believing something untrue.

The ambiguity in The Da Vinci Code's status (fact or fiction), on the other hand, is manifest, and has been observed and remarked upon innumerable times.

Those who cannot see the difference are disingenuous or simply not clever.

Wednesday, 23 April 2014

On 18 April this self-explanatory open letter was sent to the Electoral Commission. How can democratic elections be held if parties are not even allowed to say in any explicit form in official documents what they stand for?

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Dear Electoral Commissioners

I represent the political party Liberty GB, which is standing candidates in the South East of England in the forthcoming European Parliament election.

As part of our preparation for the election, I recently attempted to register a number of new party descriptions with the Electoral Commission. It was our intention to choose the best of these for printing on the ballot papers. In total, thirteen descriptions were submitted, of which all but three were rejected. Among the rejected descriptions were the following:

End multiculturalism, support Western civilisation.
No to Islamisation. Yes to Britain!
Immigration, no. Islamisation, no. Britain, yes!
Stop Britain becoming Islamic.
No to hate preachers, jihad, terrorism.
Safeguarding Britain's future, no to sharia.

The rejection letter (attached) received yesterday from the Electoral Commission sought to justify their decision on the basis that the descriptions are "likely to be … 'offensive'". No definition of "offensive" was offered, neither did the Commission give any indication as to who might in future be offended by these descriptions, nor indeed the basis for the prediction.

We find it difficult to imagine how any decent, law-abiding voter could be offended by a statement opposing "hate preachers, jihad, terrorism". Regarding opposition to sharia and to the Islamisation of Britain, these represent large, growing and evidence-based strands of public opinion – legitimate opinion that cannot be properly represented politically if its designating terms are censored out of electoral communications. Regarding multiculturalism, you may be aware that several European heads of state, including our very own Prime Minister, have publicly criticised it far more strongly than our first description above does. Is the Electoral Commission saying that it is legitimate for established politicians to express opposition to multiculturalism, but not those seeking elected office?

The Commission argues that within the rejected descriptions is an "implication that some [unspecified] groups in society were to be excluded, rejected, disparaged or disliked". In response, we would point out that even within the groups the Commission studiously avoids naming (we make an educated guess as to who they might be), there are significant strands of opposition to jihad, sharia, hate preachers, and indeed the Islamisation of Britain.

You surely do not need us to tell you that free elections depend upon the capacity of political parties and candidates to communicate clearly to the electorate what they stand for so that voters can make an informed choice at the ballot box.

Should not the broad strands of public opinion that Liberty GB represents be allowed expression in a free election? And is it not more than a little hypocritical of the Electoral Commission to be citing "freedom of expression" and "freedom of thought [and] belief" in the context of this censorial ruling?

The writer George Orwell said: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." By prohibiting Liberty GB from expressing widely-held positions (that some unspecified group might or might not want to hear), the Electoral Commission strikes another small blow against freedom of speech in Britain – the central freedom that earlier generations of British people risked or gave their lives defending.

Saturday, 19 April 2014

Vote for Liberty GB in the European Elections on the 22nd of May because Liberty GB is the only credible party that can change what's wrong, since it's the only party which has clear ideas about what caused it.

Today's major symptoms of the disease that affects Britain – mass immigration, Islamisation, multiculturalism – have been caused by the Left's cultural dominance in Britain – as all over the West – over the past 50-60 years.

Uncontrolled immigration – in fact, invasion, as this is something about which the British people were never consulted and, if they had been, would very likely have rejected – was something wanted by the Left. The previous Labour government is the one most responsible for it, with its open-door immigration policy.

Multiculturalism and Islamisation are natural consequences of both mass immigration and Leftist ideology.

The Left believes that Britain has a dirty past, imperialist and oppressive of the poorest people on earth. This is historical revisionism for ideological reasons: in reality the colonised countries and populations benefited from colonisation more than Britain did. But it doesn't matter if it's not true, because the Left believes it and it has the means to make many others believe it. As a consequence it has instilled in the British people a sense of guilt.

Also, unrestricted immigration is allowed, even encouraged by the Left because it's a form of redistribution of wealth, one of the Left's cardinal tenets. We are relatively rich, they are poor. Let's welcome them and shower them with benefits.

And why should British identity and culture be dominant? It's a form of cultural imperialism, they say. We're all the same. Purely leftist ideology, again.

This cultural relativism that doesn't judge or evaluate applies to Islam too, even to its appalling manifestations, from sex slavery of young white girls to honour killings.

Never mind, we must celebrate diversity, Islam included.

And also, and here we come to the crux of the cultural matter, why not? We don't believe in Christianity any more. So, why not Islam? It's a religion of the poorest people on earth, and that by itself is a reason to accept it and celebrate it – so they argue.

There is no doubt that the profound erosion of Christianity, its values and ethics has been accompanied by the rise to dominance of the leftist, in particular neo-Marxist, ideology because it has been caused by it, with its attacks against Christianity and propagation of atheism.

Historically Marxists, communists, anarchists have always been enemies of Christianity. "Religion is the opium of the people", Karl Marx said.

He and Engels also hated the family. They wanted to see it dead, and children communally raised.

We are certainly going in that direction, with the welfare state taking the place of fathers.

In our world, 'post-Christian', secular, neo-pagan, atheist, the family has also become much closer to Islam with its polygamy. We have multiple marriages and divorces, children forced to share their fathers with his other families, much like in polygamist Islam.

The Left's 'sexual revolution', the removal of sexual behaviour from the sphere of morality, the domain of ethics, has greatly contributed to that.

Only understanding the cause that has produced an unwanted effect can eliminate that cause and reverse that effect.

There's no other party today in Britain that has formulated such a clear analysis of the current problems as Liberty GB has.

We have detailed policies to solve what afflicts Britain. You can see them in full at libertygb.org.uk.

Please support, join, donate to Liberty GB, and visit our website.

Vote Liberty GB. My name is Enza Ferreri, and I'll be standing as a candidate with Paul Weston and Jack Buckby at the European Elections on May 22nd. Thank you.

The recent news that doctors trained outside the EU perform remarkably worse than others on key exams and performance reviews has created fears and lack of trust in doctors.

This is the result of a study commissioned by the General Medical Council and carried out by the University College London and University of Cambridge, published in the British Medical Journal - the most rigorous study to date – , and a research by Durham University also published in the BMJ.

Non-EU-trained doctors make up a quarter of the NHS medical workforce. We’ve repeatedly – in fact, whenever there is a debate on immigration - been told how immigration has been the saviour of the NHS, which couldn’t be run without foreign doctors. And now scientific studies show that these same doctors, in a high percentage of cases, represent a risk for patients’ safety.

According to the new research, more than 80 per cent of NHS doctors trained abroad do worse than the average British doctor in exams to join the professional bodies for GPs and hospital doctors, and half of them would fail the tests passed by British doctors.

More than 88,000 foreign-trained doctors are registered to work in Britain, including 22,758 from Europe. They account for approximately two thirds of those struck off each year. The country with the largest number of doctors removed or suspended from the medical register is India, followed by Nigeria and Egypt.

“We have no idea about the medical schools they come from and inevitably they’re going to be very varied,” said Professor Chris MacManus, who led the UCL study. He also commented: “There is no real mechanism for checking that doctors coming from outside Britain have been trained to the same level as British doctors.”

The UCL’s findings have been made public now – despite the fact that the GMC working party was due to report later this year – in order to defend an allegation that the GMC was racist in marking the exams of foreign doctors.

The British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin launched a judicial review claiming the GMC failed too many foreign doctors in GP tests. But a High Court judge ruled against it this month after seeing the UCL’s report.

Prof McManus said: “We’ve been through the figures with a fine-toothed comb and there is simply nothing to show that examiners are being racist.”

It’s the same old story: fears of accusations of racism – along with problems of staffing an overstretched NHS - trump everything, including the safety of patients. Will something be done now, after the GMC-commissioned research showed more wide-ranging inadequacies than expected? The language skills have also been questioned.

Various medical authorities are now claiming that the pass mark that enables foreign-trained doctors to work in Britain should be raised “in the interests of patient safety”.

Isn’t it interesting that this is what the Liberty GB party, contesting the 22 May European Elections in the South East, was already writing in early 2013 in its manifesto? One of its policies is:

“Rigorously test foreign doctors before licensing them to practice in the UK. Foreign trained doctors are statistically more liable to malpractice and incompetence.”

Thursday, 17 April 2014

In all probability you wonder why you should vote for another new party, why this small party Liberty GB should make any difference, that others haven't made.

Yet, in all probability you are also one of the 70% of people in this country who want immigration to be reduced or stopped completely, and one of the many and increasing number of people who are worried about Islam.

You are right to feel that way on both counts. Immigration is causing great problems. Economic first: immigrants from outside the European Union take £100billion more in benefits than they pay back in taxes. This is not tabloid sensationalism or right-wing propaganda. It's the result of a 16-year study from University College London, the most far-reaching study ever conducted of the impact of migration on taxpayers, based on official and government figures. Non-European immigrants dig a deep hole in our finances: the amount taken in benefits and services by them is 14% higher than money put back.

What about European immigrants then? They pay 4 per cent more into the tax system than they take out, while British-born people pay in 7 per cent less than they receive from the state.

But this does not mean that, as the spin goes, immigrants – even if only of European origin – positively contribute to British society. It just means that European immigrants, although certainly not as ruinous as the non-Europeans, when they reach a certain number are still a big problem for British economy, as they take jobs that would otherwise be filled by British people, who in turn because of that have to be on the dole, which is a burden for taxpayers.

So, when all is considered, the contribution, even from hard-working, law-abiding and well-integrated European immigrants, is still negative for Britons. If natives did those jobs, they would contribute to the revenue the same amount of tax as the immigrants, instead of living on benefits.

The problems caused by immigration are not only economic, though. They are also social and cultural. British people forced into interminable queues for public services, schools, hospitals, GP surgeries, public housing. Costs of accommodation, bought and rented, rising and making it difficult for young people to leave home or couples to get married, as housing demand outstrips supply and pushes prices up.

Muslim immigration, in addition to all this, causes special problems. Islam is not what the politicians want you to believe. Islam's holy scriptures are divisive and provoke violence, because the final goal of Islam is the imposition of its dominance and its laws on the whole of humanity, with whatever means available, peaceful if possible, non-peaceful if necessary. You can see this happening all over the world, wherever the number of Muslims reach a sizeable percentage of the population, which is soon to be Britain's fate as they out-reproduce the British natives at a very fast rate.

There are among Muslims non-violent and decent people, no doubt, but what they do or want doesn't count for as long as they remain Muslim, because they in the end have to accept the rulings of Islamic law, which is inimical to British civilisation.

Islam is not a real religion, trying to morally improve human beings, but it's a very real political ideology of supremacism.

You have already witnessed many manifestations of this impossibility to reconcile Islam with British life and values, from halal meat pushed down your and your children's throat to sex slave and paedophile rings – who are largely Muslim – raping young white girls; from British soldiers beheaded in the street to hate preachers and terrorists protected by mosques.

Despite this, Britain is becoming progressively Islamised day by day. One morning, it will be indistinguishable from Pakistan or Somalia.

But enough with the bad news.

The good news is that now YOU can do something to initiate a change, in the simplest possible way: with YOUR vote for Liberty GB at the European Elections of May 22.
Change will not be immediate, but will start gradually and then gather momentum, in the same way as an initial decline has slowly turned into a fall into the precipice under our own eyes.

If damage has effectively been done, it can just as effectively be undone.

You need a party to represent you. Spontaneous protests, as we have seen, may attract headlines but don't produce results.

On the other hand, mainstream parties – and that includes UKIP – are too comfortable to want and enact real change, they need the votes of immigrants and Muslims to continue in their cushy jobs.

But in Liberty GB we are not career politicians, we're in politics because we can't stand what's going on any longer.

We have in our manifesto policies that will stop this madness. There is a domino effect in social politics, a vicious circle that multiplies the negative effects of wrong policies; but similarly, the right policies can produce a positive chain reaction, a virtuous circle.

Check out our manifesto – at libertgb.org.uk – to see the measures we want to introduce.

Support us, join us or simply donate money to us. And, more importantly, please vote Liberty GB at the European Elections in May. My name is Enza Ferreri, and I am a candidate. Thank you.

Wednesday, 16 April 2014

Some of the “freedom fighters” who are at war against the evil tyrant Assad in Syria, the “rebels” whom both Obama and Cameron wanted to help, have now been re-classified as “the biggest threat to Britain's security” and a “greater threat than al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan”. The British Home Office identifies Syria as “the most significant development in global terrorism.”

More than half of anti-terror investigations by the UK security service MI5 involve “Britons” who went to fight in Syria. Charles Farr - the Home Office’s terror chief - and others warned that the Syrian war is stoking the biggest terror threat to the West since September 11, and this problem is predicted to persist for as long as the hostilities will continue.

Syria is much closer to Europe than Afghanistan and Pakistan, making it a particularly easy and dangerous destination for UK Muslims who come back well trained, armed and ready for business: terrorism. And because the security services monitor about half of them, the risk is very high.

Why aren’t they monitoring the rest? And why were these men let back into the country in the first place? Simply because they’re citizens? (Are they even all citizens?)

In the past three years, from the beginning of the conflict, no fewer than 500 Britons have travelled to Syria to fight, many more than the corresponding number for Iraq. According to French President Francois Hollande, they are actually up to 700.

Between 250 and 400 of them are believed to be back with us, although the number may be higher. Apparently, they found life there “too hard”, so they say. But they may have been encouraged to return “home” in order to carry out attacks in the UK.

Hundreds more are still in Syria, and one of them has posted an internet video urging his coreligionists in Britain to join them and help their Syrian brothers and sisters, saying: "The doors of jihad are still open." He is a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a group which wants Syria to become an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law and which is considered too extreme even by Al-Qaeda, that officially disowned it. The first provincial capital to be occupied by ISIS was the city of Raqqa, on whose Christian community it has imposed payment of the jizya and other rules associated with the dhimmi status.

These are people who know their Islam, no doubt. They’ve forced even the BBC reporters to become familiar with the triple choice: convert, submit, die.

Aymenn al-Tamimi, a University of Oxford expert on Iraqi and Syrian jihadists, said:

In case ISIS’s ambitions to a global caliphate were still not apparent to anyone, ISIS’s official Twitter account for Raqqa province had this to say on the imposition of the dhimmi pact: ‘Today in Raqqa and tomorrow in Rome.’

ISIS uses British radicalised recruits, like Anil Khalil Raoufi, the University of Liverpool student of engineering who was recently killed in Syria.

The Syrian war is helping to accelerate the “final solution” for Christians in the Middle East.

The rebels’ ruthlessness is not in question. A Facebook video shows a British jihadist in Syria torturing and executing another jihadi who had insulted Allah, with the caption: “I can’t wait for feeling you get when U just killed some1.”

“Who are the British jihadists in Syria?” asks the BBC. The answer: “The Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London says most British jihadists are university-educated Muslims of British Pakistani origin in their 20s.” Ah! And I thought that, as the Left says, violent jihad and Muslim terrorism are caused by poverty and deprivation. It turns out that, once again, these people are mainly middle class.

UK security services last autumn intercepted a plot by "British" jihadists returning from Syria planning a Nairobi-style gun attack on civilians in a crowded location, maybe in London.

Furthermore, Al-Qaeda urged “lone wolf” terrorists trained in Syria to target the Queen with bomb attacks at British sporting events, including the Derby. Cheltenham races, Wimbledon and Football Association Cup matches are other recommended potential targets that could cause “maximum carnage”.

The recommendations come from Inspire, an English-language online magazine produced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), that lists Britain as Al Qaeda's biggest target after America.

The big question is: what to do?

Robert Spencer is not the only one calling for not letting Syria jihadists back into the UK. The Week has a sensible suggestion:

Pass a law forbidding any British subject from travelling to Syria - unless registered with a charity authorised by the Foreign Office...

But anyone suspected of making an unauthorised trip to Syria would not be re-admitted to the United Kingdom. Put up posters to that effect at every airport and seaport... "If you travel to Syria illegally, you will not be allowed to return here."

Preventing any more of these jihadists coming 'home' would be the simplest solution. Dealing with an attack by such men once it kicks off will be difficult. Terrorists on shooting sprees of this kind inflict damage quickly, relying on a shock effect to cow their intended victims. No doubt the SAS or SBS will arrive, but even they will be lucky to arrive in time.

The butcher's bills have been quite severe. Mumbai: 153 killed and more than 600 wounded. Nairobi: 67 dead and 175 wounded. In both cases hundreds of millions of pounds worth of damage were also caused to property. Imagine if something similar were to happen in London.

The UK’s Home Office, despite tough talking, has let these potential terrorists back into the country. We’ve heard threats to arrest and prosecute them from the Crown Prosecution Service.

There have been arrests: while only 24 people last year, already 20 this year, including Moazzam Begg, a former Guantánamo detainee – yes, one of those innocent souls – whose trial date has been set in October.

But his arrest has caused protests from the Muslim community, claiming that they are being unfairly targeted. What’s new?

That has made government officials even more “aware of the thin line they must tread in dealing with the problem” than they already were.

UK Muslim charities delivering aid in Syria complain that they risk being arrested for terrorism on their volunteers’ return home – as if one eighth of zakat (Islamic charity) were not obliged to finance jihad according to Sharia law.

In fact, ten Muslim charities linked to Syria are under surveillance after Adeel Ali, the head of a UK charity that raised thousands of pounds from the British public for Syria, has been photographed embracing masked fighters brandishing an AK47.

With Islam, you never know where the money supposedly for charity ends up. There’s ample evidence of "charity workers" in Syria supporting jihadi "martyrs”.

The Left, as usual, sides with the Muslim community, and has accused the government, like George Monbiot in The Guardian making this historical comparison: ‘If George Orwell and Laurie Lee were to return from the Spanish civil war today, they would be arrested under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006.”

But a legitimate question has been raised: how can a government, like the British one, which only a few months ago was prepared to join the war against Assad and be allied to the same "fighters" on whose side these jihadists are battling, now consider them criminals? Isn’t it a bit inconsistent? This, after all, is the same government that openly supports the downfall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backs the Syrian rebels pursuing this goal, lost a parliamentary vote on military intervention in Syria last year - and is fully aware that its allies in the Gulf are funding al-Qaeda affiliated groups in Syria. This inconsistency clearly shows how that pro-rebel stance is a terrible error.

And how likely is it that anything will be done to British-citizen Syrian jihadists now, when in an analogous situation in the case of the NATO-backed uprising in Libya in 2011 no British jihadi fighting in Libya was arrested? After all, to punish them would be “Islamophobic”.

Saturday, 12 April 2014

In British law, race and religion are increasingly becoming deliberately confused for the purpose of accusing critics of Islam of racism.

A soccer fan was arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after allegedly ripping up pages of the Quran and throwing them at a match. While on bail, he was also banned from attending any football games, visiting St Andrew's - the stadium of the incident -, and going to any city where his team Middlesbrough was playing.

Insults against Islam are taken very seriously in Britain, and the world of soccer is particularly sensitive to them. After the incident, Middlesbrough Football Club suspended six more people, and vowed to ban anyone convicted of the “crime” from the Riverside Stadium, its home ground, for life.

A Middlesbrough club spokesman said it operates a "zero tolerance policy" towards all forms of discrimination, and supports football's pledge to "eradicate racism in all its forms".

Nobody could answer the question of what race Islam is. Muslims belong to all races, including white. But we know that the word “racism” has lost its original sense, and indeed any sense.

Originally the concept of racism had a place and an important role in both ethical and political discourses.

Now it’s best avoided because it’s lost its positive characteristics, its usefulness, and has instead become a tool for intolerance, intimidation, restriction of freedom of speech and other freedoms, in short a means of oppression.

The 19th-century German philosopher Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of modern logic, distinguished between the two dimensions of a concept: its meaning (or reference) and its sense.

The meaning or denotation is the class of objects to which the concept refers, which is comprised by the concept.

The sense or connotation is the concept's descriptive qualities.

There is an inverse proportion between the two: the larger the meaning the narrower the sense and vice versa.

A concept like "universe", just because it has as reference an all-including class of objects, has practically no sense, in that it has very little descriptive, or delimitative, power.

Defining a word means exactly that, giving it borders that restrict it and in so doing make it precise.

Since the word "racism" has started being used to refer to many attitudes, behaviours and ideas that had little or nothing to do with racism in the strict sense, its meaning has become progressively larger and larger, correspondingly decreasing its sense.

When today I hear about someone or something being called "racist", I hardly ever believe that it’s true. The likeliest explanation, I think to myself, is either an umpteenth case of excessive political correctness, or a personal attack. The descriptive capability of the term has got lost or at least dramatically eroded.

There is at the moment a worrying trend: what has for a long time been a common Leftist ploy, the shouting of “racist” to shut down any criticism of Islam, is now tried to be enshrined in British law.

The soccer case is one example of this attempt. Another is what’s happened to Tim Burton, the Radio Officer of the party Liberty GB, which will contest the May 22 European Parliament Elections for Britain (donations to help with the election campaign are welcome).

Burton appeared at Birmingham Magistrates' Court, England, on April 8, charged with racially aggravated harassment for a few tweets in which he called prominent British Muslim Fiyaz Mujhal “a mendacious grievance-mongering taqiyya-artist”.

Mujhal, founder and director of the organisation Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks), was exposed by The Telegraph newspaper last year for having massaged some facts and figures about “anti-Muslim attacks” following the Woolwich murder of soldier Lee Rigby. For this and other discrepancies between police official figures of anti-Muslim crimes and the inflated ones of Tell MAMA, the organisation, which had received £375,000 from the UK government, had its public funding discontinued.

The obvious paradox here is that Tell MAMA, clearly in desperate search for “Islamophobic” crimes that could justify its requests for public funds, didn’t find a sufficient number of them of a serious enough nature. So, first it exaggerated them both quantitatively and qualitatively, calling “attacks” simple posts on Facebook and other social media. Then, when this manipulation had become well known, it used the same tactic against the people, like Tim, who called the bluff, in a self-perpetuating cycle.

Burton’s trial has been very worrying for anyone who holds dear freedom of speech and basic civil liberties. One of the worrisome aspects is the conflating of “religion” with “race”. Tim Burton was accused of racially-aggravated harassment for tweets concerning Islam. Not only Islam is clearly not a race and Muslims can and do belong to all races, but also the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service considers those two charges (racially- and religiously-aggravated crimes) as distinct and separate ones.

The Crown Prosecution Service, though, despite officially paying lip service to this distinction, in Tim Burton’s case was trying to conflate the two because it did not have sufficient ground to get a conviction on the “religiously aggravated” charge – which requires stronger evidence -, so decided to prosecute using the easier “racially aggravated” one.

As its website says, “So it will be more difficult to prosecute for inciting religious hatred as opposed to racial hatred”.

The attempt to “racialise Muslims” clearly exists but not, as Tell MAMA says, on the part of Liberty GB. It exists on the part of British Islam apologists and their allies, the politically correct Establishment.

Since there are no blasphemy laws in the UK and criticism of any religion, including Islam, is theoretically tolerated, only two alternatives are left to British Muslims who want to protect Islam from the expression of the uncomfortable truths of its supremacist and violent nature. One is to invoke the introduction of a blasphemy law; the other, subtler and more effective, is to turn existing equality, anti-racist, “hate crime” laws into a sharia-style blasphemy law.

The Macpherson Report, which followed the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in London in 1993, reached the conclusion that the British police force is “institutionally racist” and, with the alleged intent of redressing the balance, established that absolutely anything perceived by a “victim” as a racist incident is de facto a racist incident: simple perception becomes legal reality, whether it’s true or not.

This makes the endeavour to legally treat anti-Islam criticism as racist even more dangerous, as it may render it subject to the ruling of the Macpherson Report.

An attempt had previously been made by the Labour government, when the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 was passed, to formulate it in such a way that it could criminalise the criticism of Islam, the Quran and Muhammad. This was made impossible by the opposition of the Catholic Church and the Church of England, as well as various evangelical Christian groups which threatened to use this law against the Quran, which is full to the brim with incitements to religious hatred. Therefore the bill had to be amended.

But what went out legally by the door of Parliamentary procedure is now being reintroduced surreptitiously through the window of politically correct police and prosecution establishment.

Firstly, to show to the British and Western public what taqiyya – deception for the good of Islam - is and, given the special position in the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims of this divine permission to lie, to show the whole nature of Islam in relation to us through it. For this reason, Islam’s scholar Professor Hans Jansen appeared at the trial and gave evidence as expert witness on taqiyya. We christened this a “taqiyya trial”.

Secondly, to defend free speech and stop the effective use of anti-racist legislation as blasphemy laws.

Friday, 11 April 2014

There are many other aspects of it, like the wounds inflicted on grammar by the use of "they", "them", "theirs" in reference to a singular subject. For example: "Everyone knows what they are doing" or "The user must log in with their password". This is done only because it's politically incorrect to use "he", "him", "his", to cover both men and women, as it allegedly gives men a status of superiority (the same as in saying "man" to mean "the human species").

Politically correct writers - like the Australian-born philosopher Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University - instead use "she" to refer to both men and women, at least remaining grammatically correct. If we want children to be properly educated, PC should not override grammar. Writing logically helps thinking logically.

The practice of employing "they" referring to a singular has spread so much that it is now in use even when it's got nothing to do with PC, like in cases where the sex of the subject is known, so either "he" or "she" would be fine. I suppose people say "they" just to be on the safe side as they don't know the rationale behind its use, or they do it even in a totally automatic, thoughtless manner.

There is a particularly interesting case of PC language: the word "gay". The homosexual movement has hijacked what was once a common English adjective meaning something completely different - in fact in many ways opposite - from the sense that has become predominant today thanks to that movement's highly successful efforts, and now we cannot use this word in the original sense any more. That is tantamount to a small group's theft of the language that belongs to everybody.

In the video above George Galloway interviews Peter Tatchell, the UK's number one homosexual activist, about what terms to describe homosexuals would be accepted by the thought police of his movement. In it Tatchell, among other things, explains the origin of the word "gay" in the modern sense of a man sexually attracted by other men.

According to Tatchell, homosexual men's intention in adopting this term for themselves was to distract people's attention from the sexual nature of their condition. I can understand why they wanted to do so: they knew that being associated with anal sex, which is repugnant to most normal people and is medically unhealthy, as medical authorities keep saying - although this is not much reported in the media -, would not be good for their PR and image.

It is a case of dissimulation, if not outright deception. And it is a rare gem that someone involved in introducing one of the most glaring examples of this kind of politically-motivated changes in our language talks about it frankly and openly.

It is not just one of us saying that the Left intentionally changed the meaning of words for political reasons, but Peter Tatchell admitting it in a video interview with George Galloway. We can document a claim with evidence directly from the horse's mouth.

We should not accept this dissembling any more than we accept taqiyya from Muslims. I never use the word "gay" except in inverted commas (unless I want to describe someone who is merry). To do so would be to give in, to help homosexualists in their disguising attempt.

"Homosexual" is an honest word. It is not offensive - in fact, homosexuals who believe this are implicitly admitting to thinking that there's something wrong with their condition. At the same time, it tells things as they are: it describes people who are sexually attracted to the same sex (from the Greek "homos", meaning "same").

Thursday, 10 April 2014

Overall, the acquittal of Tim Burton and the judge's rulings on the case were a victory on two fronts and maybe not so much on a third.

The judge ruled that a few tweets, even intemperate and even relating to a Muslim person, cannot be construed as harassment. He clearly said that the Harassment Act was intended for entirely different situations from this one, like stalking somebody or shouting through his letterbox.

He also, if not explicitly accepted, took into account the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya. This can be a turning point for the counterjihad movement. Muslims are generally believed by people in the West when they talk about Islam; in fact they are considered as the experts on this system of beliefs, as one could naturally assume, so they are often asked questions about Mohammedanism by the media in the expectation that they'll throw light on it and help Westerners to better understand it.

But if the Western public can now gradually come to realise that there is a good, inherent reason, rooted in Islam itself, why Muslims are not reliable and trustworthy sources of knowledge on Islam, the discourse on this pseudo-religion in the West may slowly take a different path.

Taqiyya may now be officially established in the British legal system. Although taqiyya itself may not have been part of the judge's ruling, what sets a precedent is that the doctrine has somehow been given official recognition.

There is a hierarchy of the courts in the UK. The basic rule is that a court must follow the judicial precedents from a higher court, but it is not bound to follow decisions from courts lower in the hierarchy. Roughly, the hierarchy is:

Where the precedent was set by a court of the same level, the court is generally bound by the previous decision, but this is subject to exceptions. Different considerations apply, depending on the level of court, as to whether the court may depart from a previous decision of a court of the same level.

These are the two victories. Where we didn't win is in the District Judge's acceptance that Muslims, although clearly not representing a race in the strict biological sense, can be considered a race when, as a group, treated in a different manner as other groups.

This evidently did not affect his decision, but it shows that the worrying trend of using the terms "race" and "racism" in any way that fits the goals of the politically correct brigade is still alive and well, and supported by even reasonable and intelligent judges like Mr Ian Strongman.

Wednesday, 9 April 2014

On 8 April at Birmingham Magistrates' Court, District Judge Ian Strongman heard a trial of racially aggravated harassment against Tim Burton, 61, a computing consultant from Birmingham and the Radio Officer of the British party Liberty GB.

The reason for the charge was three tweets he sent over a period of a month from early June to early July 2013 to Tell Mama UK, a helpline organisation for victims of anti-Muslim attacks that also serves to monitor and collect data on them, whose director is prominent Muslim Fiyaz Mughal.

Investigations by The Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan discovered that, in the wake of the murder of soldier Lee Rigby, Tell Mama had inflated numbers and seriousness of “Islamophobic” crimes, many of which were just posts on social media.

Discrepancies were also found between police figures and the association’s statistics, and this led to Tell Mama’ state funding – which by then amounted to £375,000 – being discontinued.

These revelations inspired Mr Burton to write the tweet “I wish to report Fiyaz Mughal for being a mendacious, grievance-mongering little Muslim scumbag & I want my £214,000 back now.” (a reference to taxpayers’ money) and two other tweets of a similar tone, calling Mr Mughal a “taqiyya-artist”. For these three tweets Mr Burton was accused of racially aggravated harassment.

The concept of taqiyya, part of a well-established Islamic doctrine, is the divine permission and even encouragement for Muslims to deceive non-Muslims to further the cause of Islam, particularly when Muslims are a minority.

The trial lasted all day. The Crown Prosecution Service called Mr Mughal as a witness via a video link. He repeatedly expressed that the tweets made him feel intimidated and targeted for his Muslim faith. On cross-examination, it was revealed that he did not know the meaning of the word “mendacious”, one of the insulting remarks that provoked the trial.

Next, the defendant Tim Burton took the witness stand. He said that his tweets, although in retrospect intemperate, were not intended nor expected to generate distress or anguish in someone like Tell Mama’s director, whose job is to search for and read online posts of analogous kind.

He added that the tweets were a political expression of outrage at the abuse of public money and the encroachment of Islam into British society.

Dutch scholar of Islam Professor Hans Jansen gave evidence as expert witness on taqiyya. He explained that the doctrine of taqiyya is accepted by all Muslim theologians and Quran commentaries, and rejected the prosecution’s and Mr Mughal’s theory that this word refers to a behaviour only found among minority Shia Muslims persecuted by majority Sunni Muslims, or that it is just used by far-right groups to victimise Muslims.

Asked by the defence lawyer if a Muslim could reasonably be offended by being described as practicing taqiyya, the witness replied that he had no reason to, since it is part of the faith he follows.

The District Judge, who had read some of Professor Jansen’s writings before the trial, seemed to find his arguments persuasive.

He found that Mr Burton had a right to free expression and that Mr Mughal had not been caused harassment by the three tweets sent to Tell Mama which were critical of him and his organisation. Mr Burton was acquitted on all charges.

Sunday, 6 April 2014

On Tuesday 8 April at 10am Tim Burton’s trial at Birmingham Magistrates' Court will settle the question of whether the defendant, by calling Muslim Fiyaz Mujhal “a mendacious grievance-mongering taqiyya-artist” on Twitter, committed racially aggravated harassment, as he is accused of having done by the West Midlands Police.

Tim is the Radio Officer of Liberty GB, a British newly-formed conservative and patriotic party.

Burton’s trial is very worrying for anyone who holds dear freedom of speech and other basic civil liberties. One of the worrisome aspects is the conflating of “religion” with “race”. Islam is clearly not a race and Muslims belong to all races, including white. Furthermore, the Crown Prosecution Service considers those two charges (racially- and religiously-aggravated crimes) as distinct ones.

But, despite officially paying lip service to this distinction, in Tim Burton’s case the CPS is trying to combine and confuse the two because it does not have sufficient ground to get a conviction on the “religiously aggravated” charge – which requires stronger evidence -, so decides to prosecute using the easier “racially aggravated” one.

As the CPS’s own website says, “So it will be more difficult to prosecute for inciting religious hatred as opposed to racial hatred”.

Since there are no blasphemy laws in the UK and criticism of any religion, including Islam, is theoretically tolerated, only two alternatives are left to British Muslims who want to protect Islam from the expression of the uncomfortable truths of its supremacist and violent nature. One is to invoke the introduction of a blasphemy law; the other, subtler and more effective, is to turn existing anti-racist, “hate crime” laws into a sharia-style blasphemy law.

Our intention is twofold. Firstly, to show to the British and Western public what taqiyya – deception for the good of Islam - is and, given the special position in the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims of this divine permission to lie, to show the whole nature of Islam in relation to us through it. For this reason, Islam’s scholar Professor Hans Jansen is scheduled to appear at the trial and give evidence as expert witness on taqiyya. We’ve christened this a “taqiyya trial”.

Secondly, to defend free speech and stop the effective use of anti-racist legislation as blasphemy laws.

Thursday, 3 April 2014

I’m interested in the relationship between truth and effectiveness of a belief (or a theory).

Are true beliefs the only ones to be useful, solve problems, achieve goals?

Is there a correspondence between what is true and what is effective?

Positivism says yes (look at the relationship of correspondence between science and technology, its application).

I also say yes: historically it seems true, humankind is ever more effective and has ever more power as scientific knowledge of reality progresses.

Whenever this is not the case, it is because one acts “as if”. That is, it happens if a false belief makes one behave in the same way as a true one.

A good example is: to suffer for the death of a loved one does not serve any purpose. But if somebody simply says that to him/herself, it may have no effect.

If, on the other hand, one thinks: “I’ll see that person again in Heaven”, s/he behaves as one who says: “Suffering serves no purpose”, even though s/he does that by following a, let’s assume, false belief, which in this case leads to the same behaviour that would be inspired by a true belief.

I've assumed, for the sake of argument, that this belief is false, but in reality it would be more accurate to say that it's not certain.

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About Me

Philosophy graduate, journalist, website creator and
blogger born in Italy and living in London. I have been London correspondent for Italian media, including Panorama, L'Espresso, La
Repubblica. I translated Peter Singer's book Animal Liberation into Italian.